Top Stories

German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler are already facing an onslaught of outrage by animal rights activists and environmentalists for emissions research they conducted on monkeys, but new reports from two German news outlets say the companies also financed human testing.

Clashes erupted over the weekend between the internationally recognized government of Yemen and separatists in the country's south, threatening to complicate an already-complex skein of alliances — and exacerbate the bloody conflict that has raged for years between them.

This weekend's bloodshed broke out Sunday in the southern port city of Aden, where forces loyal to the separatist Southern Transitional Council traded gunfire with loyalists of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The scattered fighting has claimed at least 12 lives and injured scores more.

In the days after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, residents of some of the hardest hit rural areas found themselves stranded — cut off from more populated areas by mudslides, crumbled roads and bridges, and toppled trees and power lines. In those early days, the only food and water many of these communities received arrived by helicopter, sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Locations and activity of U.S. military bases; jogging and patrol routes of American soldiers — experts say those details are among the GPS data shared by the exercise tracking company Strava, whose Heat Map reflects more than a billion exercise activities globally. The Pentagon says it's looking at adding new training and policies to address security concerns.

Major League Soccer announced it is awarding a franchise in Miami to former star player, David Beckham. Beckham, his financial backers, local officials and fans celebrated at a ceremony Monday in Miami.

After a global fundraiser, a plea to Pakistan's Army for help, an ill-timed snowstorm and a daring overnight climb by a team of volunteer rescuers, French mountaineer Elisabeth Revol has been rescued from Nanga Parbat, one of the world's tallest and most dangerous mountains.

But her Polish climbing partner Tomasz "Tomek" Mackiewicz, whose life she was attempting to save had to be left behind.

At least seven survivors from a ferry that sank more than a week ago near the Pacific island-nation of Kirabati have been rescued from a small dinghy.

New Zealand's military found the survivors aboard a wooden dinghy after the 56-foot catamaran ferry MV Butiraoi went missing. The vessel was originally thought to be carrying 50 passengers and crew; however, Kirabati President Taneti Mamau later said that up to 100 people may have been aboard.

Gunmen attacked an Army Garrison situated near a military academy in the Afghan capital Monday, killing at least five people -– the latest in a series of assaults that have rattled the country in recent weeks.

Jennifer Glasse, reporting for NPR from Kabul, says five heavily armed assailants stormed the police guard outside the Marshal Fahim academy Monday and that Afghan soldiers battled the attackers for several hours.

She says two of the militants detonated suicide vests, two were shot and one was captured.

Mort Walker, the renowned comic strip artist best known for his cartoon depicting the high jinks of the loafing Army private "Beetle Bailey," died Saturday at the age of 94 at his home in Stamford, Conn.

Walker drew Beetle Bailey as a daily comic strip for 68 years, making him the longest-running artist in the medium's history, according to a statement from King Features, which performed the original syndication for the strip.

This is NPR Music's live blog of the 2018 Grammy Awards. The telecast of the awards show is scheduled to run from 7:30 until 11:00 p.m. ET. We'll be here the whole time, updating this post with every award or performance.

As protesters across Russia rallied Sunday against a presidential election in March they say is rigged in President Vladimir Putin's favor, police in Moscow forcibly detained the opposition leader who sparked the demonstrations, Alexei Navalny, soon after he joined his supporters on the streets of the capital.

The Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal has now more fully ensnared Michigan State University, where the disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor — who has admitted to abusing multiple women and girls in his care — worked for two decades.

A month's worth of unusually heavy rain in Paris gave way to sunshine on Friday, but a day later, the skies were sodden once again, leading to fears that the Seine, which has already overrun its banks, would creep across more of the city.

Editor's note: This post contains graphic descriptions that some may find disturbing.

A suicide car bombing in Afghanistan on Saturday has now killed at least 103 and wounded at least another 235 people near a police checkpoint in the country's capital of Kabul, Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said Sunday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes one week after another Taliban-claimed attack on a luxury hotel in Kabul left at least 22 people dead.

Venezuela's pro-government Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the main opposition coalition won't be allowed to register for the presidential election, a decision that is fueling accusations of election rigging even before people head to the polls.

The ruling follows the government's decision, under President Nicolás Maduro and the United Socialist Party, to hold early elections, before April 30.

A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange announced the theft Friday of $400 million in digital currency. Some estimates put the loss at the Coincheck exchange at over $520 million.

The stolen assets were stored in the cryptocurrency NEM, one of hundreds of digital currencies created in recent years. Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency, dropped precipitously on news of the hack but has since regained much of its value.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington says it has postponed two upcoming solo exhibitions following allegations of sexual misconduct against their artists, Chuck Close and Thomas Roma.

Close, a painter and photographer, is best known for his close-up portraits of faces — many of them famous, such as Brad Pitt and Kate Moss. Roma, a photographer, taught at Columbia University until recently and focuses his work on scenes in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Hundreds of French citizens lost their savoir faire on Thursday, driven to desperation by a grocery chain's sudden 70 percent price drop for a jar of Nutella. Stories of "Nutella riots" began to spread; videos showed crowds of people shoving and yelling in supermarkets, trying to reach the jars.

The known population of one of the world's rarest fish has just doubled, thanks to a lucky find in the waters off Tasmania, Australia.

Meet the red handfish, a name that reflects the hand-shaped fins on the sides of its body. The striking creature doesn't really swim — it "walks" slowly along the seafloor. And until recently, researchers say they were aware of only one colony of the rare animals, with around 20 to 40 fish.

The U.S. economy didn't grow as quickly as many economists had hoped, according to numbers released Friday by the Commerce Department.

During the final three months of 2017, a closely followed measure of the whole economy, called the gross domestic product, a rose at a 2.6 percent annualized rate. That's reasonably good, but less than the 3.2-percent pace in the third quarter. Most economists had been predicting about 3 percent growth.